The number and types of electronic devices available to consumers have increased tremendously the past few years, and this increase shows no signs of abating. Devices such as portable computing devices, tablet, desktop, and all-in-one computers, cell, smart, and media phones, storage devices, portable media players, navigation systems, monitors and other electronic devices have become ubiquitous.
These electronic devices have been packing an ever increasing amount of functionality into ever decreasing sized packages. This has led to the use of increasingly complex logic boards, as well as increases in the numbers of logic boards in these devices. One way to pack in more circuit boards has been to stack them inside these devices. But these stacks often require complex interconnections. The result of this is that these stacks of printed circuit boards are often thicker than desirable.
Moreover, the amount of data being transferred between these circuit boards has been increasing, thereby necessitating increases in data rates of signals conveyed by lines connecting the boards. Solving these problems has been further complicated by the goal of wanting to have an interconnection scheme that is simple and reliable to manufacture.
Also, to increase the functionality and reduce device size it may be helpful to make such interconnections space efficient.
Thus, what is needed are circuits, methods, and apparatus that provide a reliable, space efficient, high-speed interconnections between stacked printed circuit boards.